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Researchers warn of hacks radiation

Jan

9

2015

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology warn against side channel attacks on equipment with electromagnetic radiation or sounds of capacitors can be used to intercept data. Hacks are the researchers a matter of time.

Side channel method would make it possible not to attack users who are connected to the Internet and also physical access to a device would not be required. At this moment there is no publicly documented side channel attack, but the researchers can so change. “And it is of course possible that someone already made ​​such attacks, but that information does not share,” says one of the researchers, Alenka Zajic from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Devices such as smartphones and laptops can give away include accidental data by electromagnetic radiation, for example, can be captured with antennas. Also sounds that can be tapped capacitors and changes in flow are captured by devices connected to the same outlet. That this is possible is already known, but there is relatively little research on the subject.

In a demonstration showing how a researcher Zajic password typed on an Internet-connected laptop can be read by a laptop in another room. To this end, be intercepted signals that are generated by the driver of the laptop keyboard, though it was not clear what kind of radiation is intercepted thereby. In this case the driver of the keyboard was modified to make it easier to intercept signals, but the researchers are not necessarily required: software features such as spell checking would provide plenty of opportunities for an attack.

According to the researchers, the problem can never be completely banished from the world, because devices always some radiation will continue to leak. However, the radiation they leak would be reduced so that it is difficult to intercept. The researchers are targeting future research on smartphones, which would produce relatively strong radiation.

The leakage of radiation is one of the reasons that the Netherlands in 2008 renounced the use of voting machines. Remote proved possible to eavesdrop on some tunes someone, based on the radiation generated the voting machine. The government found that at the time unacceptable because elections are to be confidential.